Haute Société
by GOTASECRET
Summary: It's a match made for the silver screen, for the history books: Monte Carlo and a heist of the likes the world has never known. Or so Linus plans.
1. Ring

**A/N:** I do not, nor do I claim to, own anything outside of the storyline.

* * *

"So many good uses for ill-begotten gains."  
― Barbara Shapiro, _The Art Forger_

It starts with a phone call.

"How do you feel about Monte Carlo?" Linus asks, and it takes Rusty a full minute to realize that it is, in fact, Linus, and not Danny speaking. There's something unfamiliar in the kid's voice, any hesitance that Rusty remembers replaced with self-assured, rolling vowels and a steady cadence. There's nothing to imply that he's anything less than confident that Rusty will hop on the next flight heading to France.

Rusty thinks that Europe, as a whole, feels like a red handprint swelling across his cheek, the sharp snap of Isabel's heels on the floor, the slam of the door and the silence that followed. He draws a hand across his jaw, tracing the ghost of her slap. Even now, he isn't sure what he feels worse about: using her Interpol access to learn more about the whereabouts of a certain Vermeer, or being careless about covering his tracks and very nearly getting her fired.

It's after midnight, and Linus sounds like he's been awake for hours. There's a soft commotion behind him. It sounds like a restaurant, and Rusty wonders if Linus isn't in Europe already. He bites back a comment about transatlantic charges and says, "Nice enough, but I don't think it's anything to write home about."

"I don't know about that," Linus says, just _this _side of too smug.

"Oh?"

"Your flight leaves at seven tomorrow."

As he hangs up, Rusty hopes that Linus had the forethought to spring for first class.

* * *

Rusty finds Danny in a convince store in the Charles de Gaulle airport, looking torn between two interior design magazines.

"Tess is redoing the house," he says without looking up.

"And your contribution is French farmhouse?"

Danny says, "Connecticut is dreadfully boring," as if that is an excuse for falling into a cliché, but he buys both magazines.

"Retirement," Rusty says.

"Retirement," Danny agrees.

By the time they board their connection to Nice, they've dog-eared several pages. 

* * *

"Didn't your father teach you that you _can _run jobs with people that aren't us?" Rusty yells over the whirring of the helicopter blades.

Linus grins.

* * *

"Ruben has his casino," Linus says. "So he's in no position to come out here. Did you know that Saul is - right, of course you did. He sends his regards. They both do, actually, and Yen wasn't exactly forthcoming with what was going on, but I think he said something about modeling. So, we're three down."

They're sitting in the hotel bar. Rusty fishes a packet of airplane almonds from his pocket and pops one in his mouth. It's a casual movement, something Danny's seen Rusty do countless times, but it doesn't take away from the sharpness of Rusty's gaze; the way parts of Linus's plan are slotting into place behind his eyes is almost _tangible_.

"You're going to need an acrobat," he says.

"You don't even know the -"

"Monte Carlo is built on cliffs," Danny says patiently.

"You're going to need an acrobat," Rusty repeats. "I know a few on the continent."

Rusty excuses himself to make some calls and Danny shakes the glass in his highball glass. "He's your point man, Linus," he says. The kid - but he isn't much of a kid anymore, is he? He certainly doesn't look it, in a perfectly tailored suit and Italian leather shoes. Europe might have gotten the best of Rusty, but it seems to suit Linus. But he'll always be _the kid_, the _gamble_ from the Benedict job, and Danny sees a bit of that kid - feeling in-over-his-head and out-classed - now. "You've got a damn good idea here," Danny continues. "That's the first step. The hardest step. Now, just let Rusty do his job."

For the sake of Rusty's ego, he leaves the _and Rusty is the best point man in the business _unsaid.

* * *

He's beginning to feel more like council than a member of the crew, giving advice but doing little more - because he doesn't _have _to. Linus does have quite the job going, a collection of valuables dating back to World War I, tucked away in the recesses of Monte Carlo and being brought out for an exhibit later in the month.

It's an opportunity many wouldn't dare take on, and he tells Linus as much when Rusty finds another of his connections busy.

Linus waves for another round of drinks from the bartender. "Everyone else is flying in. They should be in by Friday."

It's a good plan, a good job - and yet, Danny can't pass up the opportunity. "Good to know you're so confident about this," he says, adjusting his watch to Monte Carlo time.

Linus nods emphatically.

* * *

When Rusty returns to their table for the umpteenth time, turning his phone over in his hands as he tries to think of someone else to call, Danny rubs a hand over his chin.

"No," Rusty says.

Danny shrugs, finishes the last of his scotch.

Linus blinks, looks from one to the other, and wonders when, exactly, he lost control of this job.

* * *

He's still wondering as he trails Danny through rows of beach lounges two afternoon laters. Umbrellas with the hotel's monogram run up and down the sand in orderly lines, each umbrella-lounge-table unit as identical as the last, but Danny seems to know exactly what difference he's looking for.

"What are we looking for?" Linus asks.

"Miss Caravello," he says, but it's less of an answer and more of an introduction, because he's stopped in front of a chaise and a young woman is moving her sunglasses from the tip of her nose to the crown of her head.

She blinks up at them with wide, dark eyes. Linus suddenly feels silly in his sport jacket and tie, but he hadn't known Danny was taking him to the beach, of course he hadn't, and it's all he can do not to reach up and remove the necktie. But Miss Caravello is already saying, in heavily accented English, "I think I liked Rusty more."

Danny smiles indulgently and motions at Linus. "Linus Caldwell, this is -"

Caravello sits up, swinging her legs down from the chaise. "Caldwell like Bobby?"

"Exactly," Linus says, managing not to flinch when she turns her gaze on him.

"Yes, I definitely liked Rusty more." She turns to Danny. "Did he go to jail? Or - oh, did someone finally shoot him?"

"Linus, this is Cosima Caravello," Danny says, ignoring her question and the way her tone suggested that she thought it a shame that she wasn't the one to pull the trigger. "She's -"

Linus can't help it when he says, voice tipped with sarcasm, "Cosima like de'Medici?"

"Li_nus_," Danny says quietly, warningly. If it was this confrontation he'd been wanting, he would not have suggested Rusty go await the rest of their team at the Nice airport.

"Consider it a family name," she says, folding her hands neatly in her lap as she continues, "Now then, what may I do for you gentlemen?"

Danny puts on his most charming smile and says, "Linus has a preposition for you."

* * *

"You didn't," Rusty says when he gets back that evening, the rest of the usual suspects in tow and milling around the suite's living space. Rusty took one look at them as they came through the door and, with a single flick of his head, corralled Danny and Linus out on the balcony.

Monte Carlo shines around them, lights falling down the cliff like a waterfall. It's as beautiful as it is opportunistic. Danny feels the familiar spark of being on the job as he says, "She's the best option we have."

Rusty runs his tattooed hand across the crown of his head. Turns to Linus and stares, hard, like by looking hard enough he could read the truth on Linus's face. "I told you. Not her," he says.

"No, you didn't."

"I did." He whirls back around to face Danny. "I told both of you."

"I know -" Danny begins, hands coming up placatingly.

"You didn't tell me!" Linus argues, irritation flaring. Rusty and Danny operate on a different wavelength - perhaps Rusty _had _told Danny, and it very well could have been directly in front of Linus. He would not have been the only one that would have missed it, and he refuses to take the blame for this.

There's a part of Linus, a very slight part, because he'll never stop being thankful for Danny and Rusty for giving him his start - because his father's name wasn't doing much at all for him; Danny hadn't even known that Bobby had a son - but that doesn't mean that he isn't annoyed. He came up with this plan - he looked at the angles, figured out the pros and the cons. He got damn far on his own, and for Rusty and Danny to waltz in and -

"She's more trouble than she's worth," Rusty says. "She's untrustworthy. She's reckless. She's -"

"She got the better of you once, and you've yet to get over it," Danny says. His voice is quieter, his hands tucked into his pockets. The picture of nonchalance, even in pseudo-confrontation.

Linus asks, "What? When?" Because perhaps _that _is what Rusty should have told him. Not whatever cryptic comment Rusty had made to attempt to keep them from talking to Caravello, but at that moment, Basher comes to the door.

"Secrets don't make friends, gents," he says. "Have we got a job going or not?"

* * *

For better or worse, they do.


	2. Pop

Cosima comes bearing gifts.

They'd been here before, of course. Many times, in fact: in Vienna, in London, and in Nuuk, where she had stayed only long - for Cosima Caravello did notcare for the cold - enough to pilfer a whalebone corset dating back to the height of the Norsemen. But those were not the moments he remembered - no, Rusty could only think of Saint Petersburg, where she'd spirited about for the bits of the heist that did not involve her, clicking her heels together and distracting them all from their jobs. Which is not to say mistakes were made, because they were _professionals_, but someone had looked away at just the right moment and -

She thrusts a magnum of champagne forward, nearly knocking him in the chin. "For Mr. Caldwell in celebration of the start of a wonderful partnership."

"_Wonderful_," Rusty echoes, moving aside just enough to allow Cosima to slip past him; he spies a second bottleneck protruding from her bag. "You're late. Linus is already explaining everything." He underlines _late_ with a slight waving of the bottle in his hand; the golden foil at the neck crinkles under his grip and Cosima smiles.

"Mind the gold leaf," she says.

Gold - _bleeding_ - leaf.

"Unbelievable," Rusty says, following Cosima out of the suite's marble-covered foyer and towards the sunken living space, where the rest of the crew was seated on the various bits of opulent furniture: Turk and Frank seated on either side of a cherrywood table that was surely from the 1800s; Livingston, Basher, and Virgil sitting in a row on the cherub-printed couch, Livingston's laptop open on his lap; Danny was standing behind an armchair, the sleeves of his oxford shirt rolled to his elbows and his forearms braced on the back of the chair. He's the first to notice Rusty enter the room, Cosima trailing behind him, and Rusty makes a line to stand next to him as Cosima says, from behind him:

"Livingston!"

Livingston lifts his eyes from his laptop screen; his fingers twitch over the keys as if he could write a code to remove himself from the room. "Oh," he says weakly.

_Oh_, indeed.

* * *

Half an hour later, the champagne still hasn't been opened, and Cosima is finding herself far more interested in what is going on in the square below the hotel than what Linus is going on about, thinking that perhaps the lecture would be far more interesting with a bit of champagne. But Linus barely looked at her when she came in, much less her gift; he's had his nose stuck into his research for the entire afternoon.

She spins around to face front and raises her hand in the air.

Sheets and sheets and _sheets _of blueprints spread out on the low, glass table, marked all over by red ink; projected over the suite's electric fireplace is an architect's animated rendition of what the Astly Studio and Gallery of Monte Carlo was to look like once it was finished, and pictures of what it _actually _looks like are taped to the wall around the projection for comparison and context. Grainy as they may be - taken on a mobile phone so as not to attract attention - they show the architect's vision come to life in clean, modern lines. Artwork hangs on lines from the ceiling like _stalactites in a glittering, glass cave._

_The very make up of the gallery makes Rusty feel vulnerable and exposed, even now, from the suite. Even Basher, who is brash - though never irresponsibly so - and brawdy, is watching Linus's presentation over steepled fingers that can't quite hide his worried expression. _

_She presses her tongue to the back of her teeth and waves her hand around. _

Linus's mouth closes around an unfinished sentence about the gallery's security, and he looks at Cosima like he's forgotten that she was sitting in the room.

"Yes?" he says cautiously.

"Can we - sorry, sorry, excuse me," she says, peeling herself from the windowsill and sidestepping around Frank and Turk. She curls her hands around the back of the couch, fingers brushing Basher's shoulder. She can smell the smoke on him and wonders if her fingers will come away smudged black with gunpowder. "Can we talk about the pay off?"

"I was getting there -"

"I am sure you were," she says, but she continues speaking without paying him much attention. "But, honestly, very little of this concerns me. I would just as soon show up for my bit and be done with it."

Tossing his laser pointer from one hand to the other, Linus waits patiently for her to be finished.

"This." She motions to the entire mess spread out in the suite "You're going to have to sell everything, yeah? I mean, that's where the money comes from - it is not robbing a casino, gentlemen. And you will lose quite a bit of money because these pieces are fairly high profile, which means they will not be so easily sold -"

As if she's saying something profound, Linus nods.

It sets Rusty's teeth on edge. "Is there a point here, Cosima?" he asks, and there's something sharp in the smile that he flashes in her direction, in the narrowing of his gray eyes.

"Rus_ty_," Danny intones.

But Cosima doesn't seem to quite take the bait. She says, "It just seems like a lot of work for a relatively low outcome," but her full attention is focused on Linus, and his on hers. Cosima flashes another beatific smile as she shrugs, adding, "Risk versus reward, right?"

Linus smiles faintly back at her, and says, "From what I've heard, you're the biggest risk here."

There's silence, except for the tapping of Livingston's laptop; it seems more frenzied. Frank and Turk, who had been watching the conversation like a match at Wimbledon, freeze, staring somewhere between Linus and Cosima. Both of Danny's eyebrows raise, but his eyes betray the fact that he's trying very hard not to smile.

Cosima rocks onto her toes, looking thoughtful. "And the reward is better than I am?" she asks. Her lips curl into a smile. "What aren't you telling us, Linus-Son-of-Bobby-Caldwell-Caldwell?"

The tension in the room doesn't disappear, but it does seem to melt, just slightly.

* * *

The question is not - or rather, it shouldn't be - '_what isn't he telling _them?' as much as it is (should be) '_what aren't you telling _me?'

But Linus is playing that close to the chest for now.

* * *

The light begins to fail, casting a glare on the projection screen; Basher stands and stretches, and the team seems to fan out around him, disbanding for the evening. Some are going out for dinner; others straight to their respective living arrangements. Linus doesn't know where Frank is going, and he doesn't ask. Just catches Frank's eye as Frank puts on his jacket, and Frank walks to the door with Virgil before doubling back, crying _forgotten reading glasses_.

Virgil thumps Frank on the back once and runs to catch up with Turk; plush as the hotel is, the walls are not so thick that Linus can't hear the sounds of the brothers Malloy roughhousing their way down the hallway. He pictures the vases of flowers and the framed artwork in the hallway; bland and commercial as it all is, the decor is inoffensive, and he's sure the other patrons of the hotel would rather not experience the Malloys' unique demonstration of brotherly love.

"My blood sugar is low," Frank says when the room is vacated. Danny and Rusty, talking in low voices by the wall of picture windows, don't seem to count. "You're going to have to make this quick."

Linus makes a note to have hors d'oeuvres at the next meeting. "We need a forger."

Forgers - not to mention _forgeries _- had not been part of Linus's speech. There had been a lot of talk about security - Livingston was probably back in his room, looking into the ultra-sophisticated, extremely advanced security that Monte Carlo was famous for; he was _definitely_ halfway through a bottle of Prozac - and quite a bit of discussion about playing the part of curators and connoisseurs and buyers. _Something for everyone_, Linus had said, _so everyone will have to be at their best. _

Careful to neither agree nor disagree, Frank says, "A forger?"

"I need a perfect copy of this," Linus continues, passing a picture of Raphael's _Portrait of a Young Man_ across the table. "_Perfect_," he repeats. "Aged down to the minute. Every scratch in place. This portrait was -" Picking up the the photo, Frank says, "A Nazi causality, I know. They found it. It was all over the news." He pauses, thinks. "Which is why it's going to be at the exhibit." In the past few years, Linus has earned the reputation as one of the best in the business - the best member of a team, of course, never as the idea man - and Frank is getting a front row view of why. His hands are quick and precise as he straightens his blueprints and staff rosters. There's nothing uncertain about it, just like there's nothing uncertain in his tone when he says, "I need the painting for tomorrow."

Frank laughs. Linus's hands never stop moving.

Disappointment floods through Frank's chest, spreading into the pit of his stomach and sitting heavily there. It's impossible. He'd always thought Linus more sensible than this - there was no way. _No _way. "Are you _trying _to make me pass out?" he asks. Linus shrugs, but his expression doesn't change. He really has been taking lessons from Danny. "We're going to need a hell of a forger."

"_The _forger."

"The - damn."

"Go have dinner, Frank. They have an excellent filet here."

Bobby Caldwell's son, Frank decides as he exits the room, is certifiable. The conversation has left Frank feeling like he's wading through water; he can't even muster up annoyance at the taupe hallway. And he's going to tell the elder Caldwell as much. Write him a note, even, letting him know about his son's first job. About the sheer amount of work that's going into it, and that he believes it can be done in a month; that he believes it can be done with just nine people.

Bobby is probably going to end up reading about it in the papers after they have all been locked up.

And yet, Frank still has the picture in his pocket. He's going to try to get into contact with The Forger.

But first: a really good red wine.

On Linus's tab.

* * *

"What's this?" Linus asks, tilting the bottle of champagne back to read the label.

"Cosima brought it," Rusty says.

Linus grins. "Beware Italians bearing gifts?"

Rusty claps him on the shoulder as he slides past. "Danny always knew you were a quick study."


End file.
